Andrew Kuchins is a senior fellow and director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.  Formerly, he was the director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Russian and Eurasian Program in Washington, D.C.  Among his many publications, he coedited, with Dmitry Trenin, Russia: The Next Ten Years (Carnegie, 2004).

Question: Recently you examined different scenarios for Russia’s near-term development.  Which internal and external factors are most likely to influence Russia’s political and economic trajectory over the next decade?

Kuchins: Our study, which resulted in the report “Alternative Future for Russia to 2017” identified a couple of things, and one of them, probably which is at the top of the list, is the oil price. That determines the levels of revenue that are coming into the Russian economy from oil and gas sales, and so dramatic changes in that have a rather dramatic effect on the Russian economy. Although I think it is important to note that the current Russian recovery is much more broadly based than the energy sector. The leadership understands that they have excessive dependence on energy exports, i.e. that dependence on the energy price is a vulnerability for Russia.  The second factor has to do more with the political system itself. That is the highly centralized and highly personalized nature of Russian power. That is a key feature of Russia traditionally going back to Czarist days, and even to some extent in the Soviet period, and something that has been true both of the Yeltsin years and the Putin years, although in very different ways. The high degree of authority vested in one political figure with weak institutions around him also creates the potential for greater instability.

Question: Many American experts have stressed demography and declining health indicators as some of the greatest challenges for Russia… 

Kuchins: Certainly, the demographic challenges are very large. The declining population, the very high health care cost incurred, and the incidence of very serious illnesses at relatively young ages puts serious constrains on the capacity for Russian economic growth. I think, though, as we concluded in the report, these are issues that with good policy could be addressed and managed. So far, that has not really been the case. Certainly, there is tremendous awareness of the problem in the Russian government. We will have to see how effectively they can deal with it. We are already seeing the impact of the demographic decline on an increasingly tight labor market, and that’s only going to increase in the future.

Question: You have said that Dmitri Medvedev may seek warmer relations with the West during his time in office. Why do you think so?

Kuchins: Russia, while its economic recovery has been impressive, and unexpectedly so in the past 10 years since the financial crash of 1998, is really in the relatively early phases of its longer term recovery.   If you look at the aspirations that the Russian government has set for itself in its 2020 plan and in the other documents that have been produced, there really is a long way to go for Russia to get to [its desired] position economically.  There needs to be a lot of focus, at least for the next 10-15 years and likely longer, on how you most effectively promote increasing economic growth, which is the foundation for growing Russian power in the world at large. Having that in mind, foreign confrontation and at the broad scale conflict with the major powers is something that Russia principally wants to avoid. I don’t think they want to repeat the experience of the Cold War. It was extremely costly with all of the allocations for the Soviet military-industrial complex, and that was one of the key factors for the demise of the Soviet Union. I think the Russians have the standpoint: "Been there, done that."

Question: Moscow has been criticized by some to have an incoherent foreign policy.   Do you think this is the case?

Kuchins: I think there’s more coherence and more coordination to Russian foreign policy today than there was 10 or 15 years ago. I think the state is better organized than it was. Whether certain foreign policies or goals are inherently contradictory, I think you’ll find that to be true in Russia as you will in virtually any country, including the United States. There are a lot of interest groups, including, perhaps even more so in the case of Russia, personal interest groups that have an impact on foreign policy, which does create some degree of incoherence. Foreign policy in most countries is principally reactive. That has, to some extent, been a vulnerability or a weak point in Russia’s foreign policy. It’s understandable, since Russia was in such a catastrophic condition for a number of years. The recovery has come very quickly and very recently, but I think now this the time for Russia to rather than being the country that can only say no to certain things, whether it is NATO expansion or missile defense, to ask how they can think about being more constructive in creating the new institutions and mechanisms of global governance that are needed. The Putin team in the election campaign talked a lot about the anachronistic global architecture of international relations. They are right about that on a number of issues, but what are they actually going to do to contribute constructively to the creation and the modernization of those institutions? I see some evidence in a positive direction, but you can find enough evidence to make the other argument as well.

Question: Does the next president of the United States have any role to play in this, or is the American policy towards Russia unlikely to change no matter who comes into office? 

Kuchins: Certainly from the standpoint of the US-Russian relationship, I think who the next president will be matters to some extent.  But I generally advise caution in expectations of large changes in policy on the basis of what various candidates say on the campaign trail.  If we are looking at Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain, assuming that Mr. Obama wins the democratic nomination, or even if we put Sen. Clinton in the equation, all three of the candidates have been more critical rhetorically about Russia than Mr. Bush or his policy has been. There are different degrees of that criticism, with Obama being the most moderate, then Mrs. Clinton, and finally Mr. McCain being the most critical on Russia. My expectation is if there were to be a McCain administration, there would be the least interest on the U.S. part in trying to engage the Russians more constructively. The tone would be more negative and critical.  On issues, missile defense is a higher priority on the Republican wishlist, so that would probably be more strongly promoted by a McCain administration. While NATO expansion is principally a bilateral issue, I would expect that Mr. McCain would promote that at least as enthusiastically as Mr. Bush. The WTO accession issue and granting Russian PNTR status… That’s an interesting case.  Democrats are less supportive of free trade, and certainly we have seen that on the campaign trail with Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton. But they are more moderate on Russia, whereas Mr. McCain sells himself as a free trader, but he is considerably more critical on Russia. That would be an interesting test case to see, if there were a McCain administration, how those competing interests would play out, and what degree of support would come from the White House in promoting Russia’s entry into the WTO.

Question: How do you see Russia developing its relationship with its neighbors under its new president?

Kuchins: I think Russia’s relations with its neighbors, and especially its relations with Ukraine and Georgia, will be amongst the most contested issues in the US-Russia relationship and the Russia-West relationship more broadly. In a Medvedev administration, I think the first question we face is what the division of labor will be between Mr. Putin and Mr. Medvedev on foreign policy, and that’s a bit unclear at this point. The second point I would make is that the Russian policy towards Ukraine and Georgia will to a considerable extent be dependent on what NATO decides to do and how aggressively they want to move forward with a membership action plan for those two states. There will continue to be a high level of volatility on that issue for the near term and I’m not sure that Mr. Medvedev will have too many degrees of latitude to promote a different policy from what we have seen from the Putin administration. I think it would be hard for any Russian administration to sit idly by while Ukraine moves closer to NATO membership I am actually more concerned about Ukraine than I am for Georgia, although Georgia is a more volatile place. For the Russians, I think Ukraine is a higher priority. That will be harder for them to deal with.

Question: You have been studying Russia for many years. What has most surprised you about Russia’s development over the time period that you have been following events there?

Kuchins: I think there were three events, broadly speaking, which the Soviet/Russian expert community in the United States did not anticipate and which were very surprising. I think the first one was the collapse of the Soviet Union. The second one was the really traumatic impact of the 1990s and what happened in the 1990s. I have to say that there, I was less surprised. My expectations about the long-term nature and the great challenges of Russia’s transformation, ideally into a liberal democracy, we’re talking about at least a two generation process.  I published a piece in 1991 and 1992 saying that things were going to get considerably worse in Russia before they got better, because the Soviet legacy was so dramatic and they had to stomach the total collapse of that system. It was going to take quite a while and it would entail a process of ups and downs along the way. I’d say I was personally less surprised by the difficulty that Russia encountered after the collapse of the USSR than the collapse itself.

The third thing was the speed and the magnitude of Russia’s recovery. I think nobody inside or outside of Russia really saw that one coming. I feel a little bit better about a piece I published in 2001-2002 entitled "Is Russia Rising?" It was the conclusion to a book I edited called Russia: After the Fall. I also published it as a standalone article in Demokratizatsiya and I did make the effort at that time to imagine the possibility of Russia rising relatively quickly.  Just to consider as a possibility of such a scenario at that time was generally viewed as wildly optimistic by most and delusional by some. Even in that case, what they have been able to achieve in a much shorter time is very surprising. I think it has been difficult for the Russians themselves to adjust to [it], as well as for us.

Question: Out of the scenarios that you have laid out for what is to come next for Russia, which one do you consider to be the most likely?

Kuchins: I am more inclined to be cautiously optimistic about Russia’s development prospects. Of the three scenarios I wrote about in that report, one was more of a stability scenario with continued development and it was much more optimistic than the other two, which were more tumultuous. That is definitely the one I would lean towards as most likely. The principal reason for that is that the great majority of the Russian population does want stability, and they do want greater prosperity.  While I am certain that Russia is not a particularly democratic country, but an authoritarian regime, the people in the Kremlin, or in this case the ruling elite which are outside the Kremlin like, let’s say, Mr. Putin, understand that their legitimacy derives principally from their ability to deliver, or to be perceived as delivering, prosperity and economic growth and a better life for the Russian people. That leads me to be somewhat more on the optimistic side, but given the nature of the system and the vulnerability to certain external events, I think it would be much to Russia’s benefit if it were to avoid very shocking external events.

On the campaign trail, Medvedev quoted Pyotr Stolypin, the prime minister under Nicholas II. Stolypin once said, “Give Russia two decades of stability and you will see a new Russia.” Obviously, that didn’t happen. World War I intervened and we know the course that history took with Russia, which was hardly a course of stability, but I think that Medvedev is onto something. Give Russia two more decades of relatively stable growth, and we will see a more prosperous and a more integrated Russia, and a more constructive Russia on the international stage.